All's well until a giant hand reaches down and takes a big noisy bite out of a baby pickle -- right after his solo. The savage! Mangled bits of soured cucumber fall from the sky, a disturbing yellow stain splashes across the snow, bystanders vomit relish ... and the miracle of singing dill becomes a wretched crime scene.

By Firehouse/Dallas, which, as of this moment, are the only people we want to invite to our birthday party.

Getting its Scion on, Leo Burnett Dubai has created a new commercial to kick up Chevrolet Aveo 5's cool factor to 18 to 30-year-olds and to remove the vehicle's stigma as a fleet car.

Produced entirely in the UAE - uncommon with most production outsourced to Eastern Europe or South America - the spot certainly does make the car seem attractive to one particular target audience: the canine. How that translates to the desired 18 to 30-year-old will remain to be seem.

In "Set," Crown Royal tells the tale of an old jazz cat who passes opportunity to a young, wise-eyed trumpet player on the street. It's our favourite kind of trope: one about rebirth, and how the American dream can pass from one hand to the next.

And while Crown Royal is only seen briefly in the spot -- moving across the frame on a waiter's tray -- it ends with an elegant kick-back to the label: "For every king, an heir. For every king, a crown. Crown Royal."

I quite liked it, but a hoodied kid peering over my shoulder walked by and went, "Ugh, is that a liquor ad? What do they gotta use jazz for? That makes no sense at all."

If serendipity brought you to Croatia's Zagreb Zoo last week, you could've seen lions! and tigers! and bears! ... and hipsters!

Agency Bruketa & Zinic parked "fashion beasts" in a cage to showcase Puma Sport's 2009 collection. And they didn't just stand around, either; sometimes they sang. These efforts, so different from the usual dolphins-catching-fish or monkeys-throwing-poo, were rewarded with heavy gawkage.

We've seen people trapped in cages or store windows before, typically for more sobering reasons: to combat human trafficking, or fight for pigs' rights, or promote the objectively unloveable Dodge Magnum. In any case, we thought the fashion beast thing was a neat way to captivate both parents and kids -- which aren't typically receptive to noisy marketing messages during family time.

Like the iPhone 3G, the iPod touch is sensitive to motion and stimulus, making gameplay a funtastically engaging experience. To illustrate that, the Yahoo Games page "reacts" to the movement of the gamer in this piece by TBWA/Media Arts Lab.

Niftay.

Wii did something similar on YouTube to promote Wario Land: Shake It!. And every once in awhile, a somewhat-less-awesome page manipulation spot for Marley & Me appears on MySpace. (In it, the dog Marley drags a leaderboard across the screen, knocking stuff around as he moves.)

London-based? Swing by 16 Hanbury St. and walk by the offices of Wieden + Kennedy, where a giant Christmas card is fusing the faces of passersby to various holiday characters. Stand there long enough, and you might see your own face appear on Santa, an elf, or some kind of creepy egg-shaped bird.

I was watching Heroes on Hulu last night when I caught these two utterly-bananas PSAs by Americans for the Arts.

Each ad spoofs prototypical cereal and junkfood ads in a fresh, over-the-top way. And they are hilarious, even after 80 watches (which you'll inevitably endure if you're watching any streaming TV on a network-owned site).

This print ad -- which appeared in German car magazines last Friday -- is more than ink on paper. It's a magical holding tray for your own teeny-tiny Mini Cabrio.

See how it works. To try it, print the ad out, visit this site and install the 3D plugin. Webcam at the ready? Good. Look at the screen. YOU'RE HOLDING A WEE INVISIBLE CAR!

Twist and turn the page in your hand to check out all angles. "Augmented reality" technology provided by metaio. Such a playful way to build engagement and spark Mini love (which I now have in spades).

Par for the course, though. Mini Cooper has a habit of engaging customers in creative and fun ways. See billboards that talk to you and its White Rabbit banner ad campaign -- where users could follow a white Mini from one website to another.